A Path Less Traveled

The path I walked on became narrower as I traveled, until evidence of previous passage was so faint, I began to make my own way…

In doing so I found myself within a forest so thick with ancient trees, I could scarce see sunlight. The floor was thick with fallen pine needles soft enough to sleep on, and though there was no path at all, each tree there had a name, and mine was known to them.

Looking around me I saw that on the tree branches, squirrels lazed or chattered, their coats glossy, their bodies’ fat; fallen logs created hollows where many kinds of mushrooms grew, and a stream just a few feet to my right, revealed schools of fish when a ray of sunlight fell on its pools of water.

I had been hiking for a while and stopped to rest by a pine tree so thick I could not reach around it with the help of five. Sitting, I felt hungry and began to daydream of Fuji apples and freshly plucked carrots from soft earth until a plop of something falling on my leg roused me from reverie. A large, juicy Fuji apple rested there; I looked up to where it might have come from and saw more of the same dangling from a branch above my head. Humph…pine trees making Fuji apples? When I bit into the apple I found it was unlike any I had ever tasted; its flavor intense, rich, textured in the most complex and delicious way. When it felt time to continue, I pushed myself up with one hand and found there a carrot top, ready for picking. In awe I ate it, finding that just like the apple, the flavor was intense and richly layered, unlike any carrot tasted before.

“Is this a dream?” I wondered. But the water in the creek running by sounded real and the moisture on the back of my pants from when I sat was wet enough. “Should have a drink,” I thought, heading to the creek where I lingered, sensing this place in which I found myself. The sounds were plentiful, each unique; everything there, including the rocks and the soil, felt so alive, sentient—each with its own voice, and all speaking itself at once. Yet there was no discord in the sound that made, only a humming symphony that nurtured and filled me as water to dessert soil.

Time was not the same here; I felt no hurry in it. I could have lingered for days perhaps, were it not for the new presence that entered my awareness. Following the sense of this new presence I found its origin across the creek; a tall, human-like-person, beautiful to look upon, fully engaged in observing me.

We stared at each other for many minutes, seeking answers to unspoken questions that must have had a positive conclusion for we ended our mutual gaze satisfied; then, in the next blink, my sense of this world turned upside down, I began to spin and spin until suddenly the spinning stopped and a little dizzy, I found myself among a city of trees.

The trees were so tall, I could not see their tops; so wide I had to walk a quarter block to pass one…and they knew things…they knew everything since the beginning of time. As I took in these trees, they became even more intriguing; for each had included in its growth the form of a dwelling, and each dwelling, though its use might be similar to the previous one, was different than any other.

From within the dwellings I heard the sound of many activities that when considered together, reminded me of a beehive. Every line and curve in the forms I saw was graceful and balanced. I found it beautiful, a beauty that both touched and satisfied.

“How can so many different forms and actions create such harmony?” I wondered.

I was finally drawn further by the sound of distant music and following its source came to a clearing where dancers in shimmering cloth made art with their movements; movements who’s shadow lingered in the air after the mover had passed, marking it with patterns of grace and vibrant colors.

A ray of light drew my attention to the center of the clearing where a tree had formed itself into a raised dais; there, illumined by the light sat the most beautiful female I had ever seen or imagined. Her features were delicate and strong at the same time. She looked young, but felt ancient as the trees that surrounded us both.

Her clothes shimmered like the wings of exotic butterflies, and from her hair, longer than the length of her body—vines grew and trailed around her, spreading out into the soil beneath her.

Something about her was so familiar I stared until she caught my gaze in hers; there we stayed, unblinking…until I saw beyond what eyes can see and thus noticed that she was made up of pathways of light, light that began in her heart then spread out through her body, out of her hands and feet-- in streams that went into the soil beneath her and out beyond until they resurfaced upward into each tree, each animal, each person, each stone, each molecule of air…the stars were fed by her light, the sky, the universe and everything in it…

Within that flow was a returning flow, containing what had been sent out but with new imprints of information, added to by the individuality of everything touched; when this returning light entered her heart, it mixed itself with the contents already there until, becoming one stream of light once more, it once again left in streams down into the ground, repeating the cycle…

“Who are you?” I asked with thought alone. Her voice heard only in my head was simultaneously a rippling brook and a roaring waterfall. Yet, I was not afraid. The name she gave me was a sense of the beginning of thought, time, form, and life itself…

How long this took to convey I do not know but when the information had been given I had to translate it so I could speak of it. I looked her in the eyes and called her Center of Life-The Heart of Living Wealth.

She smiled…and my world began to spin again until I found myself sitting on a rock next to a normal pine tree, my journal on my lap…my hand writing…

There is much information picked up in vision journeys that is noticed after the wonder of the journey itself passes…imprinted information that surfaces into awareness after the fact. I note, for example, that life has a heart, and that heart is the inspiration or center of Living-Wealth.

Every form is an individual, every individual has a voice, every voice is shared and listened to—valued; each voice blends with the others as they simultaneously receive from and enrich, life itself.

From these individuals I remember that each was satiated and content. Contentment was part of the fabric of this land. Laughter was rampant. Everyone laughed, even the trees, the brook, the wind. The laughter of the trees was infectious…what fun to laugh with them.

Where there was activity, it was joyous; a spontaneous celebration of being alive, being one’s self, being one’s self in sharing with another’s self—a partnership of living. Community was effortless, spontaneous; from the earthworms and rocks to the queen bee or cloud, everyone had a song within the ongoing chorus, and the singing of each made the wealth, while the honoring of each, made it fertile.

This music is with me now; it keeps me standing in the vision—learning the ways of its rhythm. And suddenly I know these notes can be played here in the land that has forgotten, by those who long to remember—their true voice, sung where each is important enough to contribute to the wealth of life itself.